The intentionality of memory (original) (raw)
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S. Bernecker and K. Michaelian (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Memory, 2017
The most salient aspect of memory is its role in preserving previously acquired information so as to make it available for further activities. Anna realizes that something is amiss in a book on Roman history because she learned and remembers that Caesar was murdered. Max turned up at the party and distinctively remembers where he was seated, so he easily gets his hands on his lost cell phone. The fact that information is not gained anew distinguishes memory from perception. The fact that information is preserved distinguishes memory from imagination. But how do acquisition and retrieval of information contribute to the phenomenology of memory?The exclusive aim of this chapter is to sketch a map of the phenomenology of memory. It is structured as follows. In section 1, I introduce the contrast between content (what is remembered) and psychological attitude (remembering). This distinction will be helpful in disentangling issues in the phenomenology of memory. Section 2 is devoted to the contribution of memory content to phenomenology, section 3 to the contribution of the attitude of remembering.
New Directions in the Philosophy of Memory
New Directions in the Philosophy of Memory presents newly commissioned work from well-established, leading scholars in the philosophy of memory as well as from young scholars who are currently emerging as important contributors to the field. The commissioned contributions to the volume deal with a broad range of issues in the philosophy of memory, from issues in the metaphysics and the phenomenology of memory, through questions about memory and norms, to issues related to memory and affectivity. While the topic of memory has until recently been somewhat neglected in contemporary philosophical debates, a broader interest in relevant themes is currently developing; indeed, the philosophy of memory is emerging as a growing research area and at present it is attracting a substantial amount of attention. In line with this recent development, the volume provides a timely venue for new and original research in the philosophy of memory.
Fernández, J. (2019). Memory: a self-referential account. Oxford University Press
Estudios de Filosofía, No 64, 2021
Fernández’ most recent book constitutes an articulated development of several philosophical considerations on memory displayed in previous, and forthcoming publications. The result of such articulated development ends up being a consistent account that provides an innovative and thought-provoking perspective on episodic remembering. This volume not only gathers and articulates the author’s previous ideas, but also provides new reflections, and objections that encompasses four significant domains in the philosophy of memory. In the first part of the book (Chapters 1, 2, and 3), Fernández offers an account of both the metaphysics and the intentionality of episodic memory; in the second part (Chapters 4 and 5), the author deals with certain phenomenological aspects involved in remembering; in the third part (Chapters 6 and 7), two important debates in the epistemology of memory are discussed.
The Phenomenology of Remembering Is an Epistemic Feeling
Frontiers in Psychology
This paper aims to provide a psychologically-informed philosophical account of the phenomenology of episodic remembering. The literature on epistemic or metacognitive feelings has grown considerably in recent years, and there are persuasive reasons, both conceptual and empirical, in favour of the view that the phenomenology of remembering-autonoetic consciousness, as Tulving influentially referred to it, or the feeling of pastness, as we will refer to it here-is an epistemic feeling, but few philosophical treatments of this phenomenology as an epistemic feeling have so far been proposed. Building on insights from the psychological literature, we argue that a form of feeling-based metacognition is involved in episodic remembering and develop an integrated metacognitive feelingbased view that addresses several key aspects of the feeling of pastness, namely, its status as a feeling, its content, and its relationship to the first-order memories the phenomenology of which it provides.
Forthcoming in Current Controversies in Philosophy of Memory (Routledge
The (dis)continuism debate in the philosophy and cognitive science of memory concerns whether remembering is continuous with episodic future thought and episodic counterfactual thought in being a form of constructive imagining. I argue that settling that dispute will hinge on whether the memory traces (or "engrams") that support remembering impose arational, perception-like constraints that are too strong for remembering to constitute a kind of constructive imagining. In exploring that question, I articulate two conceptions of memory traces-the replay theory and the prop theory-that return conflicting answers to whether remembering is constructive imagining. The prop theory's vision of traces is suggestive of continuism, while the replay theory's is a natural fit for discontinuism. Which view of traces is in fact correct remains undetermined by current empirical work. Nevertheless, it may already be possible to reach a compromise in the (dis)continuism debate, through the development of a conciliatory continuist causal theory. This view-only outlined here-accepts the continuismfriendly prop theory of traces, while still requiring that genuine remembering fulfills an appropriate causation condition, as required by the kinds of causal theories of remembering typically favored by discontinuists.
Remembering without Stored Contents: A Philosophical Reflection on Memory
This paper defends a view of remembering that is in tune with radically enactive and embodied accounts of mind – accounts that assume cognition is not all of a piece, and not always and everywhere representational and content-involving. An implication of this emerging framework for thinking about minds, when extended to memory, is that successful acts of remembering should always be understood as cognitively extensive; to remember is to be connected in cognitively appropriate ways with the right external events. Remembering is a matter of actively reconnecting with past happenings, and this is a process that involves constructing contents and it may involve having attendant sensory imagery. Nevertheless all of this can be understood without assuming the existence of anything like stored contentful proxies or stand-ins.
Foreword - Philosophies of memory
Voluntas: Revista Internacional de Filosofia, 2019
The philosophy of memory today From time immemorial, philosophers have been concerned with issues related to memory. However, the philosophy of memory understood as a particular field is a very new enterprise. This new field of study is the result of the growth of research on memory, which can be measured by a large number of publications in specialized scientific journals, conferences, seminars, as well as societies and research centers. It is safe to say that The philosophy of memory is now well on its way to taking form as a distinct, coherent area of research, with a recognized set of problematics and theories. […] Philosophers of memory […] increasingly think of themselves as philosophers of memory, and the area is in the process of developing its own infrastructure, as books, special issues, conferences, and workshops on all aspects of the philosophy of memory become regular occurrences 1 .